- David Ball offers a reminder that Canada's immigration system includes the needless detention of children - and that we should be working on ensuring families can stay together, rather than claiming any virtue in merely falling short of the scale being implemented by the Trump administration.
- Neil MacDonald writes that ruthlessness and dehumanization are exactly what Trump's voters wanted - and that they're sadly not at all out of line with the U.S. history. And Andre Picard discusses the long term health ramifications of the U.S.' policies of family separation and child incarceration.
- Meanwhile, Sally Weale reports on a new survey showing the large number of children in the UK going without basic hygiene due to poverty.
- David Leonhardt charts the perpetually-increasing size and power of big business in the U.S. And Gordon Laxer argues that Canada shouldn't hesitate to say goodbye to NAFTA due to its similar effects at home.
- Finally, Mark Winfield points out that a typical right-wing prescription of less regulation and free money for the corporate sector will only exacerbate Ontario's problems:
Getting rid of cap-and-trade and reducing the provincial gas tax will not make the increasingly evident impacts of climate change go away.
If Ford attempts to make cuts to hydro rates without first addressing the underlying drivers of increasing electricity costs, Ontarians might see even higher costs in the future. Key among the underlying drivers of those cost increases are the life-extensions and refurbishments for the province’s aging nuclear power plants they Wynne government committed to.
...
A simple economic strategy focused on tax cuts and deregulation will be hopelessly inadequate to deal with the regional impacts of the transition from manufacturing to service and knowledge-based economic activities, to say nothing of the challenges presented by the Trump administration’s US actions in agriculture, steel and auto manufacturing.
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(R)esponding to these various dynamics will require a more sophisticated economic strategy than tax cuts and further deregulation, that in a province that had already declared itself “open for business” under the Liberal government. Indeed, the approach outlined in the PC platform runs a very real risk of undermining the basis of the province’s economic success.
The losses in provincial revenues from tax cuts will undermine the quality of services and infrastructure the province is able to offer. Deregulation around the environment carries risks that would undermine the quality of life the province offers its residents, to say nothing of threats it would pose to their health and safety.
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